What has changed in the last 20-30 years so that it now takes two incomes to maintain a household?
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As this site is relatively most American the glory days of Americans being able to live off a single income were created post World War 2 when Europe and a lot of the world was bombed to shit.
This left America as the only large developed country with working infrastructure and manufacturing. This is why jobs paid so well for Americans and created a huge economic boom.
Other countries didn’t see this effect other than the baby boom which meant lots of taxes when they became adults and so lots of infrastructure and social policies are paid for and lots of new cheap houses being built to rebuild the cities.
Then there’s all the other globalising effects others have mentioned. Once Europe had rebuilt it started pulling money back from America. As China and India develops that takes money and business away from other countries too.
America was rich because other countries were poorer.
Unless there’s another world defining event that just won’t happen again.
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